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Barley — Continued

A barley soup made with mutton, barley, water, and salt, served with dry biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and biscuit share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Barley — Continued

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all fat and bones from the mutton and cut the meat into small pieces.

  2. Add the barley and cold water to the meat.

Simmer

  1. Bring to a boil slowly, then simmer for 2 hours.

  2. Remove the bones and boil them separately in ½ pint of cold water for 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the broth into the soup, season with salt, skim off any fat, and serve with dry biscuits.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Barley + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Mutton + barleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together510 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Mutton + biscuittop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together40 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton
Provides the main meat flavour and richness to the broth as it simmers.
Barley
Swells as it cooks, thickening the broth and giving the soup body and chew.
Cold water
Forms the broth, extracting flavour from the meat and bones as it heats slowly.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil slowly. Starting the meat in cold water and heating gradually lets flavour and gelatin leave the meat into the liquid, giving a clearer, fuller broth. Rapid boiling tends to make the broth cloudy and greasy.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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